Jim Falvey to present on cap and trade

University of Montana Western Assistant Professor of Business Jim Falvey will be presenting at the next Montana Western Faculty Forum on Wednesday, April 27 at 4:30 p.m. in IT Woods Room 107. Falvey's presentation is entitled "Economics and the Administration’s Proposed 'Cap and Trade' Response to the Perceived Problems of Global Warming." UMW NEWS BUREAU
University of Montana Western Assistant Professor of Business Jim Falvey will be presenting at the next Montana Western Faculty Forum on Wednesday, April 27 at 4:30 p.m. in IT Woods Room 107. Falvey's presentation is entitled "Economics and the Administration’s Proposed 'Cap and Trade' Response to the Perceived Problems of Global Warming."
Falvey, an economist, will begin with his views on scarcity, individual choice, and the power of markets. Falvey will then provide a brief survey of the three perceived broad types of market failure before focusing on the one most widely recognized: external costs.
"Human-caused global warming (HCGW), if as unquestioned and as destructive as it is portrayed by many, is a classic external costs case," Falvey explained. "As such, it is one of a long line of external cost cases, many of which have been lost to memory due to subsequently discovered solutions. While HCGW presents challenges that may not have been experienced heretofore, we also have a long history of dealing with increasingly complex problems; we are not without weapons."
Falvey will discuss cap and trade methods, which he says are likely to play a major role in solving the problems raised by HCGW.
"They provide a method that, compared to the likely alternatives, is neither antithetical to individual liberty, nor do they represent a major break with our past history in responding to externalities," Falvey added.